Last year José Carlos Meirelles, who works for the Brazilian government
agency set up to protect the country's indigenous populations, released
photographs that captivated the public imagination. Taken from an
airplane swooping over the Amazon jungle, the pictures showed a group
of Indians--their faces streaked with war paint, their bows drawn with
arrows--that were said to remain uncontacted by the outside world.

Meirelles said that he had released the photographs to protect the
tribe's territory from the onslaught of prospectors and loggers and
farmers. In pursuit of such bountiful land, settlers had denied there
were any remaining uncontacted Indians, and had mounted a campaign to
open these territories for commercial use.A few days after the photographs were made public, reports in the
media surfaced that seemed to confirm the settlers' contention: the
images were labeled "fakes," and widely dismissed as part of a "hoax,"
a "fraud," and a "PR joke."

Yet this perception was deeply misleading, and has had severe
repercussions for the Indians in the region. As I document in my new
book "The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon,"
even today parts of the Amazon--a wilderness area virtually the size of
the continental United States--remain unknown. The Brazilian government
estimates that there are more than sixty tribes that are secluded in
the jungle. John Hemming, the distinguished historian of Brazilian
Indians, has said that these forests are almost "the only place on
earth where indigenous people can survive in isolation from the rest of
mankind."

The dispute over the photographs stemmed from confusion over the
meaning of "uncontacted," as these groups are commonly designated.
Though Meirelles had never said the tribe was unknown, many in the
press had initially portrayed the group as such. In fact, like many of
these tribes, the group's existence had had long been known about--its
presence detected either by frontiersmen or by satellite imagery.
Indeed, it is likely that many of these tribes have had some form of
fleeting "contact" with outsiders over the years.

But that did not make the photographs "fakes" or a "hoax." The
reason these tribes are classified as "uncontacted" is because they
have retreated into the jungle and consciously avoided any interaction
with settlers--an interaction that has frequently led to the extinction
of Amazonian tribes.

In 2005, I visited the Kalapalo Indians in the southern basin of
the Amazon. The tribe lived in the Xingu, which is part of Brazil's
first Indian reservation. (It was created in 1961.) While the tribe had
been contacted by the Brazilian government several decades earlier, its
fate gives some sense of the threat to these indigenous communities.

While I was there, I spoke with a member of the tribe named Vanite,
whose job was to guard one of the posts on the reservation. He told me
that the other day an Indian had come to him and said, "Listen, Vanite.
You must come with me down the river. The white people are building
something in Afasukugu." The word "Afasukugu" meant "the place of the
big cats"; at this site, the Kalapalos believe, the first humans were
created. Vanite picked up a stick and drew a map on the mud floor.
"Here is Afasukugu," he said. "It is by a waterfall."

Vanite paused for a moment, then continued with his story. "So I
said, 'I will go with you to Afasukugu, but you are crazy. Nobody would
build anything at the place of the jaguars.' But when I get there the
waterfall is destroyed. They blew it up with thirty kilos of dynamite.
The place was so beautiful, and now it is gone. And I ask a man working
there, 'What are you doing?' He says, 'We are building a hydroelectric
dam.' "

The dam was being built in the middle of a major river that ran
through the Kalapalos' territory. Vanite, who was becoming more
agitated, said, "A man from the [Brazilian] government comes to the
Xingu and tells us, 'Do not worry. This dam will not hurt you.' And he
offers each us of money. One of the chiefs from another tribe took the
money, and the tribes are now fighting with each other. For me, the
money means nothing. The river has been here for thousands of years. We
don't live forever, but the river does. The god Taugi created the
river. It gives us our food, our medicines. You see, we don't have a
well. We drink water right from the river. How will we live without it?"

After Vanite finished his account, the chief of the Kalapalos, who
was standing beside him, concluded, "If they succeed, the river will
disappear and, with it, all our people."

January 06, 2009

"This paper offers an ethnographic exploration of the assertion of a 'Barkindji style' art: why this matters and to whom it matters. Focusing particularly on the Darling River area of Wilcannia and on the period from the 1980s to the present, the increasing interest in art-making by local Aboriginal people is considered. Through a dialogue with artists, artworks, and others, the work examines the changing form, design and content of art and the role of art in defining ideas of Barkindji Aboriginal culture and tradition ..." -- Abstract

PUERTO AYACUCHO, Venezuela — Three years after President Hugo Chávez expelled American missionaries from the Venezuelan Amazon, accusing them of using proselytism of remote tribes as a cover for espionage, resentment is festering here over what some tribal leaders say was official negligence that led to the deaths of dozens of indigenous children and adults.

Some leaders of the Yanomami, one of South America’s largest forest-dwelling tribes, say that 50 people in their communities in the southern rain forest have died since the expulsion of the missionaries in 2005 because of recurring shortages of medicine and fuel, and unreliable transportation out of the jungle to medical facilities.

Mr. Chávez’s government disputes the claims and points to more spending than ever on social welfare programs for the Yanomami. The spending is part of a broader plan to assert greater military and social control over expanses of rain forest that are viewed as essential for Venezuela’s sovereignty.

The Yanomami leaders are wading into a politicized debate about how officials react to health care challenges faced by the Yanomami and other Amazonian tribes. In recent interviews here, government officials contended that the Yanomami could be exaggerating their claims to win more resources from the government and undercut its authority in the Amazon.

Meanwhile, the Yanomami claims come amid growing concern in Venezuela over indigenous health care after a scandal erupted in August over a tepid official response to a mystery disease that killed 38 Warao Indians in the country’s northeast.

“This government makes a big show of helping the Yanomami, but rhetoric is one thing and reality another,” said Ramón González, 49, a Yanomami leader from the village of Yajanamateli who traveled recently to Puerto Ayacucho, the capital of Amazonas State, to ask military officials and civilian doctors for improved health care.

“The truth is that Yanomami lives are still considered worthless,” said Mr. González, who was converted to Christianity by New Tribes Mission, a Florida group expelled in 2005. “The boats, the planes, the money, it’s all for the criollos, not for us,” he said, using a term for nonindigenous Venezuelans.

The Yanomami leaders offer a far different image of the tribe than those found in anthropology books, which often depict it in Rousseaulike settings with painted faces and clad in loincloths.

There are about 26,000 Yanomami in the Amazon rain forest, in Venezuela and Brazil, where they subsist as seminomadic hunters and cultivators of crops like manioc and bananas.

They remain susceptible to ailments for which they have weak defenses, including respiratory diseases and drug-resistant strains of malaria. In Puerto Ayacucho, they can be seen wandering through the traffic-clogged streets, clad in the modern uniform of T-shirts and baggy pants, toting cellphones.

Earlier this decade, the anthropology world was consumed by claims by the writer Patrick Tierney that American scholars may have started and exacerbated a measles epidemic in the late 1960s that killed hundreds of Yanomami.

And claims of medical neglect emerged before Mr. Chávez expelled the American missionaries, who numbered about 200. They administered care to the Yanomami with donated medicine from the United States and transported them to clinics on small propeller planes using dozens of airstrips carved out of the jungle.

New Tribes, the most prominent of the expelled groups, has denied Mr. Chávez’s charges of espionage but declined to comment for this article, citing the tense relations between Venezuela and the United States.

Mr. González and other Yanomami leaders provided the names of 50 people, including 22 children, who they said died from ailments like malaria and pneumonia after the military limited civilian and missionary flights to their villages in 2005. The military replaced the missionaries’ operations with its own fleet of small planes and helicopters, but critics say the missions were infrequent or unresponsive.

The Yanomami leaders said they made the list public after showing it to health and military officials and receiving a cold response. “They told us we should be grateful for the help we’re already being given,” said Eduardo Mejía, 24, a Yanomami leader from the village of El Cejal. [...read full article...]

Contents: Rock art of the Western Desert and Pilbara: pigment dates provide new perspectives on the role of art in the Australian arid zone, by Jo McDonald and Peter Veth -- Painting and repainting in the west Kimberley , by Sue O'Connor, Anthony Barham and Donny Woolagoodja -- Port Keats painting: revolution and continuity, by Graeme K. Ward and Mark Crocombe -- Negotiating form in Kuninjku bark-paintings, by Luke Taylor -- Making art and making culture in far western New South Wales, by Lorraine Gibson -- Black on white, or varying shades of grey? Indigenous Austalian photo-media artists and the 'making of' Aboriginality, by Marianne Riphagen -- Culture production Rembarrnga way: innovation and tradition in Lena Yarinkura's and Bob Burruwal's metal sculpture, by Christiane Keller -- 'How did we do anything without it?': indigenous art and craft micro-enterprise use and perception of new media technology, by Megan Cardamone and Ruth Rentschler.

July 29, 2008

PERTH—Australia's aboriginal rock artis at risk of damage due to the country's boom in resources, reports Discovery News via the Agence France-Press. The 30,000-year-old etchings, which depict native animals as well as human faces and activities, are found on the rocks of the Burrup Peninsula in western Australia's remote Pilbara region; the peninsula is currently the only Australian entry on the World Monuments Fund's list of most endangered sites.

Anthropologist Sue Smalldon believes that the rock art has suffered since mining took off in Pilbara in the 1960s. She says the threat to the art has intensified in recent years as mining and energy companies have drained the region of iron ore, natural gas, and other resources. Another issue is the lack of management for the art works, which are scattered over 88 square kilometers around the peninsula. Visitors must scramble over boulders in order to view the rock art, and vandals have removed rock faces with power tools.

"Anywhere with this level of significance, you would have management in place, in my opinion," Smalldon said. "Somewhere equivalent like Stonehenge or Kakadu — all of those places have management in place."

Stephen Corry, the director of the group - which supports tribal people around the world - said such tribes would "soon be made extinct" if their land was not protected.

'Monumental crime'

Survival International says that although this particular group is increasing in number, others in the area are at risk from illegal logging.

The photos were taken during several flights over one of the most remote parts of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil's Acre region.

They show tribe members outside thatched huts, surrounded by the dense jungle, pointing bows and arrows up at the camera.

"We did the overflight to show their houses, to show they are there, to show they exist," the group quoted Jose Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Junior, an official in the Brazilian government's Indian affairs department, as saying.

"This is very important because there are some who doubt their existence."

He described the threats to such tribes and their land as "a monumental crime against the natural world" and "further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the 'civilised' ones, treat the world".

Disease is also a risk, as members of tribal groups that have been contacted in the past have died of illnesses that they have no defence against, ranging from chicken pox to the common cold.

[...] One of the pictures, which can be seen on Survival International's Web site (http://www.survival-international.org), shows two Indian men covered in bright red pigment poised to fire arrows at the aircraft while another Indian looks on.

Another photo shows about 15 Indians near thatched huts, some of them also preparing to fire arrows at the aircraft.

"The world needs to wake up to this, and ensure that their territory is protected in accordance with international law. Otherwise, they will soon be made extinct," said Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International, which supports tribal people around the world.

Of more than 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide, more than half live in either Brazil or Peru, Survival International says. It says all are in grave danger of being forced off their land, killed and ravaged by new diseases.

I'm accustomed to thinking of digital restrictions in the U.S. intellectual property context. We’re told that DRM use restrictions are trade-offs for getting material in digital form, but generally, the trade is a bad one for the public.

As Kim described when I met her at a conference over the summer, the Warumungu have a set of protocols around objects and representations of people that restrict access to physical objects and photographs. Only elders may see or authorize viewing of sacred objects; other objects may be restricted by family or gender. Images of the deceased shouldn't be viewed, and photographs are often physically effaced. When the Warumungu archive objects or images, they want to implement the same sort of restrictions.

They wanted an archive that was built around Warumungu protocols for accessing and distributing materials (in many forms). One of the first mandates was that everyone had to have a password so that they could only see materials that they were meant to see based on their family/country/community status.

Kim's response was to help construct a digital archive with access controls — ACLs based not on copyright but on the various elements of a person's community status. Your identity sets your view-port into the archive; the computer will show only items you have permission to see. The community can thus give objects context in the online archive similar to that which situates them offline. As an object’s status changes, the database can be updated to reflect new rights or restrictions.

Yet the Mukurtu's form of "DRM" is fragile. Users are encouraged to print images or burn CDs, which have no controls built-in.

People can also print images or burn CDs and thus allow the images to circulate more widely to others who live on outstations or in other areas. In fact, one of the top priorities in Mukurtu's development was that it needed to allow people to take things with them, printing and burning were necessary to ensure circulation of the materials.

Unlike copyright-DRM systems, which fall back to the most restrictive state when exporting or communicating with "unsigned" devices (such as blocking all copying and breaking or lowering playback resolution on high-definition monitors), this one defaults to granting access. It's up to the people using the system to determine how new and unknown situations should be handled.

Because the Murkurtu protocol-restrictions support community norms, rather than oppose them, the system can trust its users to take objects with them. If a member of the community chooses to show a picture to someone the machine would not have, his or her interpretation prevails — the machine doesn’t presume to capture or trump the nuance of the social protocol. Social protocols can be reviewed or broken, and so the human choice to comply gives them strength as community ties.

The Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive has been developed by a community based in Australia's Northern Territory.

It asks every person who logs in for their name, age, sex and standing within their community.

This information then restricts what they can search for in the archive, offering a new take on DRM

Dr Kimberly Christian, who helped to develop the archive, told BBC World Service's Digital Planet programme that the need to create these profiles came from community traditions over what can and cannot be seen.

"It grew out of the Warumungu community people themselves, who were really interested in repatriating a lot of images and things that had been taken from the community," she said.

"You find this a lot in indigenous communities, not just in Australia but around the world... this really big push in these communities to get this information back and let people start looking at it and narrating it themselves." Where to look

Dr Christian, who is an assistant professor based at Washington State University, stumbled across the idea of the archive by chance after meeting a group of missionaries who had digitally archived photos of the Warumungu community since the 1930s.

After loading them onto her laptop, she took them back to Tennant Creek and set up a slideshow - where she noticed that people turned away when certain images came up on screen.

For example, men cannot view women's rituals, and people from one community cannot view material from another without first seeking permission. Meanwhile images of the deceased cannot be viewed by their families.

Offline website

"The way people were looking at the photos was embedded in the social system that already existed in the community," she said.

"People would come in and out of the area of the screen to look when they could look."

This threw up issues surrounding how the material could be archived, as it was not only about preserving the information into a database in a traditional sense, but also how people would access it depending on their gender, their relationship to other people and where they were situated.

Dr Christen and her team of software developers came up with what is described as "a website that's not online", containing photos, digital video clips, audio files, digital reproductions of cultural artefacts and documents.

The system has also been designed with a "two-click mantra" in mind, making the content easy to access for those with low computer literacy skills.

Images are arranged in their own categories, with content tagged with restrictions.

The project believes it has established a cultural solution as well as an opportunity for Aboriginals to collate much of what was once lost. The hope of the project's designers is that as culture and traditions change, history can be rewritten and changed by people themselves.